1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a print control apparatus, a print control method, and a program therefor. Specifically, the invention relates to a print control apparatus, a print control method, and a program capable of controlling a printing apparatus that is able to perform color printing by using coloring agents of a plurality of colors. Alternatively, the invention relates to a print control apparatus capable of controlling a printing apparatus that is able to perform color printing by using coloring agents of a plurality of colors and to stop the printing when any one of the coloring agents runs out.
2. Related Art
Print control apparatuses for controlling a printing apparatus that process a plurality of printing requests have been proposed (for example, refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. H08-63303). In the print control apparatus, printing may be requested from a plurality of users. In such a case, a printing order is set on the basis of priority, which is determined basically by each user in their the printing requests, and in the case of requests having the same priority, the printing order is set so as to preferentially print the request of a printing target document having a smaller number of pages.
As described above, in the description, the number of pages of the printing target document and the priority determined by the user are considered when the printing order is set. However, in the printing apparatus having inks of a plurality of colors, residual amounts of the respective inks are not considered. In such a printing apparatus having inks of the plurality of colors, unbalance in consumption occurs among each of the color inks. Thus, sometimes, some color ink may be just about to run out, and some color ink may have a sufficient residual amount. In such a case, when a printing request for a plurality of images is received, the image, in which a large amount of the ink which is just about to run out has to be used, may firstly be printed in accordance with a certain set printing order, and sometimes directly this may result in the ink running out. In addition, some printing apparatuses are configured so that the inks are formed integrally with each other and are unable to be individually replaced. In such a configuration, when one ink has run out, the other inks having a sufficient residual amount have to be replaced at the same time. Therefore, some of the residual inks are wasted.